1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to ballistic resistant garments and method to use the same, and more particularly, to ballistic resistant garments having multiple layers of ballistic resistant material being stitched together.
2. Description of the related art including information disclosed under 37 CFR 1.97-1.99
In the past, protective armor, both solid and jointed so as to be flexible, has been used for personal protection against missiles such as knives, spears, arrows, and the like. Such personal protective armor was substantially discarded with the advent of firearms, since the prior structures, when sufficiently heavy to protect against a bullet or the like, were too heavy and/or unwieldy to wear.
In the recent past, with the development of ballistic cloth, protective garments against ballistic resistant missiles such as bullets, shot, shell fragments, trauma and cutting instruments, hereinafter referred to as ballistic missiles, has gained favor with law enforcement officials, soldiers, dignitaries subject to assassination, and the like.
While these known ballistic cloths or materials are well recognized by many as industry standard materials, they have generally suffered from an inability to protect the wearer from certain threats and have been somewhat particularly heavy and unwieldy and therefore less desirable to wear as well as hard to conceal.
It is known to have ballistic resistant garments having at least two panels with layers of ballistic resistant material in each panel with the layers of each panel stitched together at the periphery of the layers of the ballistic resistant material. However, these known garments do not have much stitching away from the periphery and through the central portion of the panel. Thus ballistic resistant garments are no longer in favor because the peripheral stitching reduces flexibility and the two such panels are ballistically less sufficient then one. In addition, the provision of separate panels afford the user with the potentially dangerous option of wearing one half of the prescribed amount of protection.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,464 issued Mar. 21, 1978 to Roggin, discloses a protective garment with only one panel composed on many layers of ballistic resistant material with stitching across the central portion of the panel. However, this garment requires many layers of ballistic resistant material to effectively resist a bullet. Disadvantageously, this known garment having a panel composed of many layers of ballistic resistant material is heavy to wear, stiff, unwieldy, cumbersome to move in, and hard to conceal.
It is also known in the prior art of the development of ballistic resistant aramid fibre fabric such as "Kevlar" (a registered trademark) of DuPont Company, of Wilmington, Del. In 1988, DuPont commercialized a significantly stronger, lighter, more flexible and wearable second generation family of aramid fibers "Kevlar" (a registered trademark) 129. "Kevlar" (a registered trademark) 129, style 704, had a 840 denier with 560 filaments with a balanced palin weave of 31 fibers per inch for the warp by 31 ends per inch for the fill. This is in a balanced plain weave with 17,360 filaments per inch in each direction and with 301,369,600 cross overs per square inch. The general prevailing opinion in the prior art concerning the effectiveness of ballistic resistant fabric is that the higher the number of fiber and filament crossover points, the quicker the energy of an impacting bullet is transferred through the layers of fabric and the less chance of the bullet penetrating the wearer's body. However, in order to maintain a higher number of fiber and filament cross overs in a fabric the fabric is less flexible and therefore less moldable to the wearer's body. This also correlates to having heavier layers of ballistic resistant fabric because a higher number of warp by fill fibers are needed in the weave in order to have adequate cross over numbers for protection from a bullet. Thus, a heavier, more cumbersome, and harder to conceal garment is produced and therefore it becomes less desirable for those who need ballistic protection to put on such a garment.
It is also known in the prior art of ballistic resistant garments that have two panels of ballistic resistant material, such as Hyper-Lite (a registered trademark) for a ballistic resistant garment series made by Safariland Body Armor, Inc. However, only one panel of this garment is composed of a flexible lightweight woven material and the other panel is composed of reinforced plastic hybrid, "Spectrashield" (a registered trademark) of Allied Signal for reinforced plastic which has two layers of fibers bonded with a resin at 0 degrees to 90 degrees orientation and the fibers and resin are packaged between upper and lower polyethylene film layers in which the fabric fibers are not woven but are maintained in tension by the resinous packaging material, which is less flexible than a panel composed of only woven material. Thus, a cumbersome, and harder to conceal garment is produced and therefore it becomes less desirable for those who need ballistic protection to put on such a garment.
It is also known in the prior art if a ballistic resistant garment that have three panels of ballistic resistant material where the outer panels composed of a woven material, made of "Kevlar" (a registered trademark) for an aramid fibre and the inner panel composed of a nonwoven semi-rigid plastic such as Spectrashield (a registered trademark) and which makes this garment less flexible. Thus, a cumbersome, and harder to conceal garment is produced and therefore it becomes less desirable for those who need ballistic protection to put on such a garment.
It is also generally known that the combination of various ballistic fabrics with reinforced plastics such as Allied Signal's "Spectrashield" (a registered trademark), can produce garments that pass lab test standards for ballistic resistant garments. However, these garments are generally stiffer and/or thicker and less comfortable to wear. Additionally, it has not yet been demonstrated that some of these materials will stop bullets when used on the human body.